SAINT JOAN OF ARC

Not sometimes, but always and for eternity, womenhave wished men killed and promised to do it.

They’d feast all night on the tongues of hogsif they believed the Devil’s potions didn’t ensure Hell.

I’m the accomplice to God’s wrath— His visions pour into me like a clear glass of liquor;

my throat turns to steel when I speak his name— nothing burns through this armor.

I’ve never killed a man, but I’ve watchedblond hair mop blood on a battlefield

and I won’t be judged for it, not on earthor in heaven. You think I need frills of lace

to be whole? I don’t even need this body— I’ll be remade in miniature statues

with shields and my spirit will bless the shrinesof female soldiers and the ones you call crossdressers.

You’re so focused on burning me, over and over, that you don’t notice when God’s globe

of fire illuminates the horizon and the windgives wings to your swarm of lies.

Soon, everyone will hear of what you did. My hair sparks until it turns to smoke

and all my bindings dissipate: skirt, body, rope.

Anne Champion of Boston, Massachusetts, is the author of Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018) and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her work appears in Verse Daily, Prairie Schooner, Epiphany, Salamander, New South, Redivider, PANK, and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a 2016 Best of the Net winner, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient. http://anne-champion.com